Turn-Based Tactical Side Scrolling Shoot 'em up - In Development.

Noyj's audio design in MTS

It’s been a lot of fun writing the music for Mighty Tactical Shooter. I haven’t taken one game-centric creative approach so much as several NOYJ-centric ones in order to broaden the palette of source material and provide suitable narratives for the game’s varying scenarios.

So for example, I responded to the Mighty Git's brief for the Repair Screen music in a fairly locked-down, goal-specific way, writing suitably short industrial/industrious/technological/reflective motifs, then fleshing the best idea out until it was an appropriate cyclical soundtrack to an activity that might last a couple of seconds, or a couple of minutes.

While with the main levels music I used a much freer approach, heeding/ignoring the brief, and writing/rejecting the phrases/riffs/bass lines central to each stage, then working these into elaborate pieces of several minutes’ length that evolved throughout their durations – while never losing their distinct identities – before ultimately repeating. I’ve created pieces here that hopefully stand up in their own right as well as for backdrops to the game-play (and that don’t make you want to chew your own ears off after repeated listens).

It’s always a healthy discipline to work within others’ creative restrictions: it forces you to listen with their ears (both in your imagination from the outset, and with their actual ears, assuming they haven’t been chewed off). You prune/discard/shape/expand your material accordingly, all the time learning about your creative language as perceived by others. What you learn might be surprising, enlightening, or baffling – but it’s always interesting. If this suggests that writing the music for Mighty Tactical Shooter has been a less ‘pure’, self-indulgent or self-representative creative pursuit for me than composition-for-composition’s-sake, it shouldn’t. This music has been no less meticulous in the making, or enjoyable, or exhausting, and I’m just as proud of it. I can’t unleash my music until I think it’s great.